That would be great if it worked like that. I know it's stupid in my position, but I like my name, and I know I didn't really do anything wrong. I feel like it would absolutely just be like letting the offending party win, if I did this. But I need to grow up and accept my new reality.

Did your employer not listen to your side of the story at all?

My manager did and I could tell they believed, but the optics of it all I imagined made it too toxic to be worth defending me over. Racist, sexist content was falsely attributed to me.

In what sense were there “optics” beyond the company? Was this incident public, or just on some forum that would only show up when people Google your name?

Some other platform picked it up and started bagging on me. Not national news public, but still.

Until HR requests your academic records, references or anything else that refers to you by your old name.

I’ve never had an employer request academic records after working at multiple FAANG companies — except perhaps right out of college, but I’m not sure even then.

Unless you’re applying for a job that’s high-profile (like VP or C-suite), or in a highly regulated industry, I wouldn’t expect this.

Plus you can probably contact your university registrar with your legal name change and ask them to update the transcript to the new name.

HireRight background check for 2 different BigTech companies required me to put the contact information of my University’s registrar. I think they did actually verify that I received the degree I said I did, despite that being over 15 years ago now.